by Kelly deVos
Peter slams the door behind us.
We enter a tall, wide tunnel made of thick, green metal that ends in another heavy steel door. It’s well lit in here and our flashlights aren’t needed.
Navarro tries to say something that sounds like Flash mores through his mask. After a second, I realize he probably said, “Blast doors.” The silo needed a system of fireproof doors to keep the crew and equipment safe when they launched the missile.
The alarm continues to sound, but it’s slightly more quiet in the tunnel. I flinch as gunfire explodes in the silo behind us. Ahead of us, the door opens slowly.
I push Charles behind my back.
Navarro doesn’t hesitate. He fires his rifle repeatedly at the door.
The bullets dent the door but accomplish little else.
Peter Navarro rips off his mask. “Harker? Is that you?”
“Dr. N.?” a male voice asks.
“We’re coming into the control room. We’ll allow you to surrender,” Peter says.
There’s a pause. “Who is we?”
“A team from The Spark is on the base. I’m here with Max Marshall’s daughter.”
Another pause.
More gunfire from behind us. Toby doesn’t have unlimited ammo. We have to hurry.
“Jinx Marshall is out there?” the voice asks.
Peter nods at me.
“I’m here,” I say.
The steel door opens, and a short, stocky man in sweats like Peter Navarro’s joins us in the hall. “Jinx Marshall!” he says. “We’ve been watching your show.”
He says this like it’s something fun we’ve been doing together and not me fighting for my life. But I keep my temper in check.
I guess this is Harker. “I was a big fan of your father’s,” he says, as I pass.
Beyond the door, we find the control room.
It’s...
What the hell is this?
The walls and floors are about what I would expect. The same green, ruggedized metal and rubber, no static flooring. But then. There are computers made of materials I don’t recognize, and thin glass displays everywhere. Technology that isn’t supposed to exist.
We remove our masks.
Two other soldiers are in the room with their hands in the air. Everyone watches me expectantly. Amelia points the camera at me. Everyone expects me to know what to do.
Except.
I glance around. This stuff is light-years ahead of anything I’ve ever used.
But I have to do something.
There’s a desk in the center of the room that seems like it’s intended to be an opps center of sorts. It’s surrounded by more of the glass monitors. One shows an outline of the underground base. It’s actually more like three silos connected by a network of tunnels. In the center is the entryway we came in. The actual missile itself is on one side, and the control center, where we are now, is on the other. Red dots that must represent people pulse on the screen.
Sliding behind the desk, I press my palm onto one of the glass monitors. Dad had a real love affair with touch screens, so this seems like tech he’d implement.
Luckily the screen turns blue. A pleasant chime sounds, and a computerized voice says, “Good. Afternoon. Susan. Marshall.”
And then.
“How can I assist you?”
A menu appears, and I press the security button. It’s pretty easy to figure out how to lock the doors. A few seconds later, Annika and Toby burst into the room. They’re out of breath.
“We managed to chase the first patrol from the silo but I’m pretty sure they went for reinforcements,” Toby says. “Whatever you’re going to do, you have to do it fast.”
I turn off the wail of the alarm. Normal yellow-white lights pop on.
When Annika removes her mask, there’s an audible gasp from the soldiers, who all freeze and stare at her. Toby glares at all three of them.
“Whoa!” Annika says. “I thought they had to stop working on tech like this because of the New Depression.”
I thought so too.
“Are we gonna be on the show?” one of the other soldiers asks Amelia.
I doubt she intends to answer him, and luckily our attention is diverted by Harker.
“Hey! That’s new,” he says, pointing at the Doomsday logo now on the screen.
I let my finger hover over the glowing illustration that reminds me of the cover of Dad’s book. It’s almost fitting that we should follow Dr. Doomsday’s Guide to Ultimate Survival until the very end.
Amelia hovers in front of me, breathing hard.
I press the button.
Dad’s face fills every one of the glass monitors.
Charles steps close to where I’m sitting at the desk. I reach out for his hand and squeeze.
The warmth is real.
On-screen, Dad begins to speak. “My dear Susan, if you are here, it can only be because my worst fears have been realized. I believed that I was helping the world by developing theories that explained how it worked. I believed it was wise to assist in the creation of dangerous weapons. For me, these were swords that would inevitably be forged, and all I could do was control who would wield them. Now I have left it to you, not to finish my work, but to destroy it. If the world is to have a future, you must create it. I love you, Susan. You and your brother.”
Charles chokes out a little sob.
A timer replaces Dad’s face on all the screens. It’s counting down from 03:00.
“Auto destruct in three minutes,” the computer voice says.
As usual, there’s no time to mourn.
An odd, greenish smoke fills the glass computer towers. It’s a type of acid and creates streaks of melting plastic on the glass. Harker and his men are already running for a blast door opposite the one we came in.
“We have to go,” Toby says.
I get up from the desk, keeping Charles close to me.
Twenty seconds have already ticked by.
“Will we be able to see Dad again?” Charles asks, staring at the monitors.
Peter Navarro coughs and points to the door Harker went through. “Follow that tunnel. It leads to an escape ladder. Hurry. You can be topside in two minutes.”
You?
Navarro catches that too. “Come on, Papa,” he says, taking a squeaky step on the rubber floor.
Peter Navarro puts a hand on his son’s shoulders. “Son, I am so proud of you. Of the man you have become.”
Gus looks absolutely terrified. “No. No.”
“I have to do it,” Peter says.
“Do what?” Gus yells. “Susan turned on the auto destruct!”
Peter walks with his son toward the door. “Marshall’s auto-destruct sequence will destroy the computer systems. That’s only half the problem. I have to take out the fusion apparatus, or it will be too tempting for someone to attempt to rebuild this thing.”
“Auto destruct in two minutes,” the computer voice says.
“Tell your mother I love her,” Peter Navarro says.
“Come on!” Toby shouts before drawing Annika through the door.
Amelia follows behind him walking backward, keeping her camera on us.
I have to get Charles out of here.
“Gus!”
Navarro stares at his father with an expression I recognize. The way that you see someone in their last seconds on this earth. The way you look at someone who is already a ghost.
I push Charles in front of me and down another green tunnel like the one we used to get here. The lights flicker, and the alarm is going again. We come to a narrow tunnel with a ladder going upward. My first thought is that I hope I’ll fit.
The metal rungs of the ladder are cool beneath my sweaty fingers.
Toby is nearing the top. As Charles ent
ers, Toby must be opening the hatch, because daylight streams down. We climb as fast as we can. I’m out of breath when we get to the grassy surface. A few dragonflies flutter about, blissfully unaware of our problems. Shouts echo from the forest beyond the clearing. The reinforcements Toby told us about will probably be in the clearing any second.
Even though I’m exhausted, I know we need to get as far away from here as possible. Navarro is almost dragging both Charles and me toward the forestry vehicles.
Run. Go. Run.
We’re nearing the car. Annika has the backseat door open.
A pillar of red flames shoots out of the silo and into the sky like an oversize cheap firework. It’s followed by a loud boom. The ground beneath our feet quivers, and an explosion bursts up.
I’m barely able to pull Charles out of the way to avoid getting hit by the silo closure door.
A flaming metal ring lands on the top of the vehicle with a smack.
Toby gets behind the driver’s seat.
I shove myself into the backseat headfirst and put Charles on my lap. Amelia crowds in. Toby’s got his foot on the gas before she can even close the door.
Fire creeps along the grass and flaming pieces of equipment from the silo drop into the clearing. Annika screams as Toby barely misses part of a bunk bed that lands right in front of us.
“What the hell is going on?” she asks.
“My father destroyed the missile,” Navarro says in a cold, dull tone as he gets situated in the passenger seat.
Amelia’s eyes are wide with fright. “I thought the whole idea was to not destroy the missile.” She’s still recording us with that stupid camera.
“The whole idea was to avoid detonating the bomb. We destroyed the cold fusion computer system. But Dr. Navarro wanted to destroy the hardware too. And it’s a long-range missile...all that rocket fuel is...” I glance at Navarro. I can’t bear to add highly explosive.
“Look out!” Charles shouts.
The car screeches to a stop.
Through a break in the drifting smoke, I see the thin, sweatpants-clad legs of...
Peter Navarro.
“Oh my God,” Annika whispers.
Navarro jumps out of the passenger seat and pushes his father into the vehicle. He then squeezes into the backseat with us. I end up almost sitting on his lap. Two seconds later, part of a metal bookcase lands where the scientist was standing.
Toby hits the gas, taking us back into the forest. He very nearly hits a flaming tree.
“Where are we going?” Navarro asks. Even though we’re driving through a fiery hellscape, he can’t keep the smile out of his voice.
From the direction of the main base, we hear a series of small explosions. More black smoke rises above the tops of the trees.
Charles leans forward. “We need to find Ramona’s man. Volchek.”
“He’s a good guy,” Peter Navarro says.
I press my ear to the glass of my window. It vibrates with the sound of rifle fire.
AIRSTA is at war.
Amelia points the camera all over the car before landing back on me.
“So, you’ve saved the world?” she says with the camera about three inches from my face. I grab it from her and hold it, pointing it at my face. And then... I speak.
“This war began as a quest to decide whether we are a nation of individuals fighting to each keep our own personal rights or a collective that must work together to ensure each individual person is respected. My father believed that this world could survive only if a strong leader stepped forward to correct the excesses of democracy. To Maxwell Marshall, the world was a broken machine in need of a strongman operator. But he was wrong. Because no single person should be allowed to completely override the will of the group. Just as no group should be able to take away our right to exist as individuals. Each side in this struggle seems to expect more of their enemy than they do of themselves.
We have been on the run. Almost lost our lives. Almost lost each other. I’ve seen bad people doing the right things for the wrong reasons. And good people doing the wrong things in the hope of achieving something right. Basic values like love, altruism and compassion are not forms of surrender that make us weak.
This world can survive only when each person loves their friends more than they hate their enemies. When hope for the future equals nostalgia for the past.
When we all understand that we must survive together because no one person can survive alone. We can’t save the world. People need to save themselves.
If you believe in fairness and freedom...if you love truth and justice...
No one can take that kind of stuff from you.
The feeling that doing what’s right is too hard...or costs too much...
In the end that’s what breaks you down.
What breaks the world down.
Because it turns out that the small ways in which we mistreat each other become a big deal. It turns out that compassion and honesty and basic human decency are what make life worth living.
What I want is a life worth living.”
I roll down my window and toss the camera out.
The show is over.
LETTER #2 ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS
Los Alamos, New Mexico
Ramona Eleanor Carver Healy spent her last five minutes on this earth reading from a paperback copy of an old Western called Horseman, Pass By. She told my dad that a wiser person might turn to the Bible. “But I’m minutes from meeting my maker, and I want to have something to make conversation about,” she said. She was able to destroy the missile created by her son. She almost made it out too. In one of life’s little ironies, she collapsed as we fled the base. Dad thinks it was a heart attack.
Against all odds, Dad survived. We all did.
Except Ramona.
She was seventy-five years old.
I watched the remnants of Los Alamos burn as the soldiers regrouped around Dad and our small camp. The black smoke rose, meeting Ramona Carver Healy in the heavens. The stench of burnt plastic and sizzling fuel filled the desert for hours. We’d won this battle, but could we win the war? Or could we dismantle the war machine?
Ramona made arrangements for Jinx to meet us in Pie Town. It’s a strange place for a reunion. But at least we’re all together again. Navarro’s father is alive. He’s still trying to find a safe way to call his wife back at home. We’re happy. Even if we’re stuck with Annika Carver. Even though there’s still no pie.
After the destruction of Project Cold Front, sixteen more states joined California in seceding from the union. Rosenthal’s strategy of driving states aligned with The Opposition to economic devastation appears to be working. Nearly all of the coastal states are for The Spark. Rosenthal has taken Washington, D.C. The Spark has disconnected The Opposition from the power grid. Dad says that the war will be over within a year.
It will have to be.
That’s as long as The Opposition can last without replenishing food and clean water.
Sometimes I think about that little girl clutching her doll back on the Booker. Her careless smile. The thin, light strands of blond baby hair that blew behind her. About her last moments waiting for death at sea. That girl has a story, and it has to be told.
There’s always a last moment. A last kiss. A last breath.
When will I draw mine?
AND THEN...
I used to dream about saving the world.
But like Dad said, you can’t save people from themselves.
That feels like another lifetime ago.
Amelia and Galloway set off for the capital. Rosenthal is there.
We leave the desert at night with all the supplies we can manage.
On foot.
Leaving everything behind.
We’re going into the heartland.
I want safety. Toby wants peace. MacKenna wants the truth.
I don’t know if we’ll ever find what we’re looking for.
Is there a world free of this war?
Gus thinks there isn’t.
But there is a dream of such a world.
And I believe we can find it. Or create it.
Until then, we keep going.
Until then, we survive.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Fat Girl on a Plane by Kelly deVos.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you for reading this book. I am especially grateful if you started with Day Zero and stayed with me, Jinx and Charles as we finished this journey.
I am so appreciative of the entire team at Inkyard Press, most especially my incredible editor, Natashya Wilson. I will always be proud of the three books we worked on together.
Thanks as well to Bess Braswell, Brittany Mitchell, Laura Gianino, Justine Sha and Connolly Bottum, who work tirelessly to bring engaging books to teen readers and readers of all ages. Special thanks to Kathleen Oudit for art direction and Elita Sidiropoulou for design for the covers of both Day Zero and Day One. Linette Kim, Heather Foy, Andrea Pappenheimer and the Harper Children’s sales team brought my work to bookstores and library shelves, and I will be forever grateful for their efforts.
Thank you to my friends and family, especially my mom, May Porter, Cassidy Pavelich, Amie Allor, Shanna Weissman and Debbie Pirone. As always, thank you to my BFF, Riki Cleveland, for friendship and always being willing to read my horrible first drafts, and to my trusted critique partner, Amy Trueblood, for your wit, wisdom and on-point notes.
To the AZ YA/MG writer community. Thank you all, especially Dusti Bowling, Stephanie Elliot, Kristen Hunt and Lorri Phillips, for all your wit and wisdom.
Thanks to my early readers, including Laurie Forest and Nancy Richardson Fischer. Any mistakes are my own.
To my wonderful husband, Jim, and amazing daughter, Evelyn, thank you for putting up with my coffee runs, late nights and strange Google searches. I am so lucky to have your love and unconditional support.
